Urban Palimpsest

[Gianluca Drago]

An abandoned shop window where different layers stack up: old stickers, a comic poster used to block the view inside, worn surfaces, a bent parking sign, and reflections of the street—cars and bikes, ancient porticoes and balconies. Past and present overlap without fully covering each other.

 

[Wes Hall]

Palimpsest…today’s word and one I’ve never encountered before, thanks Gianluca. A curious image layering the repurposed store.

 

[Gianluca Drago]

Palimpsest…today’s word and one I’ve never encountered before, thanks Gianluca. A curious image layering the repurposed store.

“Palimpsest” is a word I’d rarely come across myself until quite recently. But once you know it, it gives you an extra conceptual tool for making sense of the world around you.

 

[Ralph Turner]

An intriguing, multi-faceted image, Gianluca. The more you look, the more you see. The reflection of the road sign that presumably warns of any vehicles parked there will be towed away(?) which echoes the warning of curled 'no-parking' sign on the window. Yet there's the silhouette of a car parked by an unheeding driver.
I like how the diagonal perspective of the window frame balance the diagonals of the wooden structure behind the glass, the lines of the latter also drawing your attention to the guy giving the viewer a vaguely suspicious look. Oh, and thanks, also, for 'palimpsest', not a word I was familiar with until now

 

[Gianluca Drago]

Thanks for you detailed analysis, @Ralph Turner!

 

[Peter Roberts]

What Ralph says; I can hardly improve on that. Except perhaps to say that it comes across to me as an image of two halves (alright, two thirds and third) that are inextricably connected although each bit would probably be effective on its own. Very clever, well observed and captured, Gianluca.

 

[Gianluca Drago]

Well, as happens to me all too often, I only notice details—sometimes quite significant ones—when I look at my photos on the computer, details I hadn’t picked up at the moment I took them. In this particular case, I only noticed afterwards the geometric division of the frame into sections and the triangles created by the light–shadow contrasts (or did I??). In the end, I’m not all that quick at spotting these things.

Many thanks, @Peter Roberts, for your kind comment.